Cyberpunk 2077 world premiere: 50 minutes of William Gibson-level insanity

Inspired...How inspired? Shadow Run's "We stole everything Gibson came up with and mixed it with everything we stole from Tolkien.*" inspired?

Or is this just going to be a generic dystopian cyberpunk future which could be as much Max Headroom as Gibson? All with a CDPR flavor?

Mike Pondsmith is working with them as a game design consultant, and it is said to be modernized version of his Cyberpunk 2020. Note, that they say it's no a sequel to 2020, they have reconciled timelines with our real life timeline.

"[Cyberpunk 2020] is based on the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and other authors of the "Mirrorshades group". The game includes a number of elements now associated with the 1980s, such as the idea of style over substance and glam rock."

OMG is it just me or are all the amazing games only coming out next year?? Like this, Metro Exodus, Twin Mirror etc..

Is there really nothing noteworthy this year? Since FC5 (which I found just OK) I haven't seen anything I want to buy. I liked the idea of Detroit Become Human but I only game on PC so that wasn't an option

I never played the Witcher as I don't like the fantasy / historical genre but I heard it's great. Really looking forward to this one which looks to be just my thing.

Monster Hunter World is coming to PC this fall, that game can last an entire year. I've put over 700 hours into it on ps4 and I'll be starting all over again on PC this fall!

I loathe being forced to re-play levels in order to progress through the story. Quicksave can default off, and be an option on the difficulty screen just like "Easy" mode - if you don't want it, don't select it. As long as it's available.

I loathe being forced to re-play levels in order to progress through the story. Quicksave can default off, and be an option on the difficulty screen just like "Easy" mode - if you don't want it, don't select it. As long as it's available.

No quicksave, no sale.

The Witcher 3 has quicksave, why would you think Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't?

Not even that, since you can run most Windows games in Wine on Linux already. That's the case with the Witcher 3 for instance, which CDPR promised to release for Linux, but cancelled that effort. Still, it would be nice to have native release of CP2077 rather than run it in Wine.

Not gonna happen. They've tried once. Released Witcher 2 for Linux. They got so much hate from the Linux community for that, that they've gave up on porting games to Linux completely.

That wasn't the reason they cancelled TW3, since complaints about bad quality of initial Linux release of TW2 happened way before they said they are working on TW3 for Linux. By that time TW2 for Linux received many updates and was working very well, and Linux users left generally very positive comments about it. Only later something went sour and they commented that TW3 is basically not happening.

I.e. TW2 for Linux came out in 2014. CDPR said they were still working on TW3 for Linux in 2015 (by that time TW2 for Linux was well accepted already). Only in 2016 they cancelled that work. So what happened then wasn't related to initial problems with TW2 release.

Some suggested that it was cancelled because of some new shareholders who were less Linux friendly, or because they expected Steam Machines to be a bigger thing and they didn't work out and etc. Since then, the desktop Linux gaming market has grown anyway, so you can't apply their consideration then to the current day.

Not even that, since you can run most Windows games in Wine on Linux already. That's the case with the Witcher 3 for instance, which CDPR promised to release for Linux, but cancelled that effort. Still, it would be nice to have native release of CP2077 rather than run it in Wine.

Sort of.

Witcher 3 only recently became playable in WINE, and then only with DXVK, an extra compatibility library that is not included with WINE. And while it works decently well now, it's still got some performance and rendering issues (moreso on AMD cards than nVidia, but Witcher 3's AMD performance wasn't great under Windows either).

Witcher 3 only recently became playable in WINE, and then only with DXVK, an extra compatibility library that is not included with WINE. And while it works decently well now, it's still got some performance and rendering issues (moreso on AMD cards than nVidia, but Witcher 3's AMD performance wasn't great under Windows either).

It was mostly playable with wined3d too (D3D11 → OpenGL), but it got major performance regression related to memory access (CPU-GPU buffers synchronization), and Wine developers are still working on fixing that. It's a fairly complex issue.

dxvk (D3D11 → Vulkan) on the other hand progressed very fast, but hit missing features to implement stream output, which most likely will take a while, until Vulkan will get something like transform feedback. So yeah, I wouldn't say it's perfectly playable yet, but it's almost there.

Not gonna happen. They've tried once. Released Witcher 2 for Linux. They got so much hate from the Linux community for that, that they've gave up on porting games to Linux completely.

That wasn't the reason they cancelled TW3, since complaints about bad quality of initial Linux release of TW2 happened way before they said they are working on TW3 for Linux. By that time TW2 for Linux received many updates and was working very well, and Linux users left generally very positive comments about it. Only later something went sour and they commented that TW3 is basically not happening.

I.e. TW2 for Linux came out in 2014. CDPR said they were still working on TW3 for Linux in 2015 (by that time TW2 for Linux was well accepted already). Only in 2016 they cancelled that work. So what happened then wasn't related to initial problems with TW2 release.

Some suggested that it was cancelled because of some new shareholders who were less Linux friendly, or because they expected Steam Machines to be a bigger thing and they didn't work out and etc. Since then, the desktop Linux gaming market has grown anyway, so you can't apply their consideration then to the current day.

Linux gaming market has not only not grown, it has shrunk to virtually nothing. On Steam in 2015 in dipped below 1% and currently sits at 0.57%. And if you'd target only Ubuntu, you get 0.23%.

And that's 0.57% of the PC gaming market, which is only 28% of total game market. Cyberpunk will be released for PC and consoles. So Linux has 0.16% of that market, mainstream distros have 0.06% of that market.

So let's say they sell 20,000 copies of the Witcher 3 for Linux. That's not gonna cover the cost of porting it.

Linux gaming market has not only not grown, it has shrunk to virtually nothing.

Not according to developers who report percentage of their sales per OS. Don't use Steam survey for anything, it's useless for market evaluation. Why wouldn't Linux gaming grow? You constantly see people posting about switching from Windows to Linux, so there is a steady influx of Linux gamers. Same goes for games, there is a steady growth of number of game developers who are making Linux releases. So market is surely growing, but it's a gradual, not a rapid growth.

Linux gaming market has not only not grown, it has shrunk to virtually nothing.

Not according to developers who report percentage of their sales per OS. Don't use Steam survey for anything, it's useless for market evaluation. Why wouldn't Linux gaming grow? You constantly see people posting about switching from Windows to Linux, so there is a steady influx of Linux gamers. Same goes for games, there is a steady growth of number of game developers who are making Linux releases. So market is surely growing, but it's a steady not a rapid growth.

For many years I used Linux as my primary work machine. I know many people who still do. Neither me, nor none of them game on Linux. It's either consoles, or dedicated Win10 gaming PC or both. Similar story with OSX.

For many years I used Linux as my primary work machine. I know many people who still do. Neither me, nor none of them game on Linux. It's either consoles, or dedicated Win10 gaming PC or both. Similar story with OSX.

That's you, but many others game on Linux just fine, and it's improving both in quality of drivers and in amount of good games. It's enough for many people to switch, especially considering rapid progress of Wine in the recent years.

Not gonna happen. They've tried once. Released Witcher 2 for Linux. They got so much hate from the Linux community for that, that they've gave up on porting games to Linux completely.

That wasn't the reason they cancelled TW3, since complaints about bad quality of initial Linux release of TW2 happened way before they said they are working on TW3 for Linux. By that time TW2 for Linux received many updates and was working very well, and Linux users left generally very positive comments about it. Only later something went sour and they commented that TW3 is basically not happening.

I.e. TW2 for Linux came out in 2014. CDPR said they were still working on TW3 for Linux in 2015 (by that time TW2 for Linux was well accepted already). Only in 2016 they cancelled that work. So what happened then wasn't related to initial problems with TW2 release.

Some suggested that it was cancelled because of some new shareholders who were less Linux friendly, or because they expected Steam Machines to be a bigger thing and they didn't work out and etc. Since then, the desktop Linux gaming market has grown anyway, so you can't apply their consideration then to the current day.

Linux gaming market has not only not grown, it has shrunk to virtually nothing. On Steam in 2015 in dipped below 1% and currently sits at 0.57%. And if you'd target only Ubuntu, you get 0.23%.

And that's 0.57% of the PC gaming market, which is only 28% of total game market. Cyberpunk will be released for PC and consoles. So Linux has 0.16% of that market, mainstream distros have 0.06% of that market.

In raw numbers, Steam usage on Linux has grown; it's just that it's coincided with an explosion in the worldwide market (and particularly in China).

This is an old graphic (from before Valve fixed an issue where cybercafe users were being overcounted), but gets the point across:

Linux gaming market has not only not grown, it has shrunk to virtually nothing.

Not according to developers who report percentage of their sales per OS. Don't use Steam survey for anything, it's useless for market evaluation. Why wouldn't Linux gaming grow? You constantly see people posting about switching from Windows to Linux, so there is a steady influx of Linux gamers. Same goes for games, there is a steady growth of number of game developers who are making Linux releases. So market is surely growing, but it's a gradual, not a rapid growth.

That’s $60 - 33%. Steam, GoG, etc. take a third or more of the price. So down around $800k, still a good amount though.

Well, GOG is their sister company, so that's 100% for sales there. There is another option. If they aren't sure of success, they can make a crowdfunding campaign with sufficient cap. If there is enough demand, they'll hit the mark, if not, they won't lose anything and will in the process figure out how big that very demand is. Several people proposed it to them, but CDPR weren't interested.

So let's say they sell 20,000 copies of the Witcher 3 for Linux. That's not gonna cover the cost of porting it.

What was it at release time, around $60? That's already $1.2 million. I'd say it's way more than needed to cover the cost of porting. And I'm sure there are more Linux gamers around.

That's the price in US and Western EU only. In EU it's also tax inclusive. If the distribution cost and revenue structure would be the same as for other version, then the 20,000 copies would mean about 1,700,000 PLN ($460,000) revenue, 780,000 PLN ($210,000) profit.

$210,000 will not cover the cost of porting it. And that's even assuming that people would be willing to pay $60 for Linux version, given that the way cross platform gaming works on GOG or Steam, if you have Windows version, you'd automatically have access to Linux version.

For many years I used Linux as my primary work machine. I know many people who still do. Neither me, nor none of them game on Linux. It's either consoles, or dedicated Win10 gaming PC or both. Similar story with OSX.

That's you, but many others game on Linux just fine, and it's improving both in quality of drivers and in amount of good games.

Yeah, it's totally The Year of the Linux on the Desktop!

I had hopes for SteamOS, but since that got scrapped, I don't see any reason to bother with Linux gaming.

$210,000 will not cover the cost of porting it. And that's even assuming that people would be willing to pay $60 for Linux version, given that the way cross platform gaming works on GOG or Steam, if you have Windows version, you'd automatically have access to Linux version.

First of all, it probably would be enough, given how many tools are available to developers today already (you basically already can play the game almost perfectly without spending anything on porting, using open source tools). Secondly, see above. They could measure demand through crowdfunding, and if successful would hit their mark, and if not would conclude that demand isn't enough yet.

Totally the year of the growth of Linux gaming. No arguments here. There were several milestones in just a few recent years, including release of Vulkan, Mesa catching up, major engines adding Vulkan support and etc. Wine support skyrocketing and etc. But it happens under the hood, and not something you'll see news about, unless you are interested in the topic.

For many years I used Linux as my primary work machine. I know many people who still do. Neither me, nor none of them game on Linux. It's either consoles, or dedicated Win10 gaming PC or both. Similar story with OSX.

That's you, but many others game on Linux just fine, and it's improving both in quality of drivers and in amount of good games. It's enough for many people to switch, especially considering rapid progress of Wine in the recent years.

You talk about the progress of Wine -- if they were to put a little thought into the game running under Wine (eg. including Wine users in the beta testing and considering bugs they report to be valid bugs), think that'd be enough for the Linux gaming enthusiasts?

You talk about the progress of Wine -- if they were to put a little thought into the game running under Wine (eg. including Wine users in the beta testing and considering bugs they report to be valid bugs), think that'd be enough for the Linux gaming enthusiasts?

You mean if CDPR would do it? I think that can redeem their somewhat tarnished image for Linux gamers, if they'll make an officialy supported release using Wine. There are a few developers who make such releases just fine and people buy them.

Especially now with dxvk project, they can do it with relative ease, they just need to work through missing bits like stream output. I.e. the effort can go into working with Khronos to add and push out transform feedback in Vulkan (and drivers), and then adding that into dxvk. I'd say this is way easier than porting a game using completely custom methodology from scratch.

$210,000 will not cover the cost of porting it. And that's even assuming that people would be willing to pay $60 for Linux version, given that the way cross platform gaming works on GOG or Steam, if you have Windows version, you'd automatically have access to Linux version.

First of all, it probably would be enough, given how many tools are available to developers today already (you basically already can play the game almost perfectly without spending anything on porting, using open source tools). Secondly, see above. They could measure demand through crowdfunding, and if successful would hit their mark, and if not would conclude that demand isn't enough yet.

This isn't just some open source game though, it's a major AAA title which had 400 work for 3½ years. Also if porting to Linux would be that easy, they would have done it. As their experience with Witcher 2 has shown it's not that easy.

Totally the year of the growth of Linux gaming. No arguments here. There were several milestones in just a few recent years, including release of Vulkan, Mesa catching up, major engines adding Vulkan support and etc. Wine support skyrocketing and etc. But it happens under the hood, and not something you'll see news about, unless you are interested in the topic.

Last AAA title released for Linux was 2 years ago, since then it was only DLC for games already ported or indie games. And there are no AAA confirmed for Linux this year, nor next year (people hope for Metro: Exodus, but nothing is confirmed).

So indeed, the libraries might be there, the drivers might be there, but ultimately it means nothing if there are no games.

Looks and sounds amazing. I am also a big CDPR fan. Unfortunately for me, FPS games make me so nauseous that I can't play them, so I will probably have to skip this one.

It's not an FPS. It's an FPP RPG :-P

There are people for whom the FPS user interface style (yes, even if it's 4K at 120FPS) creates real problems, just like how some individuals have bad reactions to VR or to 3D movies. Something about a mismatch between various sensory systems, or an inability to translate motions to game control without your kinesthetic sense lining up with the visual input, that kind of thing. I believe there's more than one specific problem that causes this general symptom.

(I know because my wife suffers from this herself. Absolutely loves top-down isometric games, but cannot tolerate first-person or third-person gameplay. She's tried. We think it's related to her dyslexia, some kind of disconnect in the nervous system.)

I’m this kind of person. I have really bad issues playing 3rd person or FPS sometimes. It seems to happen more for western games for me than JRPGs like FFXV.

I’ve tried several times to play the Witcher but feel nauseous a half hour in no matter what I do. It affects me for days too. So now that this game is FPS it’s a must skip instead of a must buy for me. Too bad m, it sounds awesome.

Does it hit you when you watch someone else playing these games?

Because that's how we get past this in our house. We play the games together, with me on the controller, and her doing a bunch of "back-seat driving".

(That actually started for us with survival horror games. She was playing the original "Silent Hill", which uses a whole lot of psychological tricks to create the mood. At one point, all of them triggered at once -- the music changed, the camera angle changed, there was a sudden sound, and to top it off the controller throbbed. Startled her, and she hurled the controller at the TV, and she decided she wasn't allowed to play anymore since we couldn't afford a new TV. So we started playing survival horror games together with me on the controls and her under a blanket on the couch.)

Looks and sounds amazing. I am also a big CDPR fan. Unfortunately for me, FPS games make me so nauseous that I can't play them, so I will probably have to skip this one.

Not even at 120 fps?

Not even at 100-degree field of view?

Settings don't matter.

It is simply a case of mismatch in the visual system, and the inner ear motion detectors.

It's the same way most people get sick if there is a disconnect between visual/body motion in VR.

My brain motion processing seems to believe that first person type motion on a screen is real motion, and pretty much any game like this I have tried to play since the original doom, has made me motion sick.

I love RPGs, but when I tried to play Oblivion, I lasted maybe 20 minutes, in the first area you are trying to escape, until I felt like I was gonna puke if I continued. I had to lie down for an hour until I felt better (uninstalled Oblivion right after).

Two things help. Playing with a Joystick and sitting VERY far from the screen, since it breaks immersion, but it is pretty hard to play that way.

I actually think this would be fine in VR with proper 1:1 mapping of in game and body motion, but would need something like an Omni VR treadmill to make that work.

Why is there all this talk of 30FPS and it being some kind of technical feat or touted as "next generation"? No. That game, ultra settings, 2-4K resolution and 60-144+FPS. THAT is TRUE next generation.

30FPS talk is "next gen" as in "The PS4 is the 'next generation' of the PS4 hardware", but not in terms of true technical capability. CDPR are, first and foremost, talented PC developers. THAT is a skill that is both rare and worthy of respect. And CDPR will build the game to take advantage of PC spec, not letting its need to perform on older generation technology limit it, but to later port it with those limitations in mind.

If only console developers who ported games to PC were as skilled/capable.

$210,000 will not cover the cost of porting it. And that's even assuming that people would be willing to pay $60 for Linux version, given that the way cross platform gaming works on GOG or Steam, if you have Windows version, you'd automatically have access to Linux version.

First of all, it probably would be enough, given how many tools are available to developers today already (you basically already can play the game almost perfectly without spending anything on porting, using open source tools). Secondly, see above. They could measure demand through crowdfunding, and if successful would hit their mark, and if not would conclude that demand isn't enough yet.

There are tools. There are libraries. Nonetheless, you can't just flip a switch and make a game build on Linux, never mind run, never mind run well, never mind run on every distro and every common set of software and drivers, never mind run after every update of the supported distros and drivers. Expectations are a little different when you buy a Linux game than when you manage to get a Windows game working on Linux using WINE etc. Paying for the QA and tech support work generated alone would push it, never mind the costs of the engineers to actually do the porting.

You can't just imagine that this only affects the 'porting team' either; if you want good results, someone who knows what's what is going to have to watch to make sure the output isn't completely embarrassing, the engineers will probably have to talk with your main engine team and take up their time, and so on. And there's plain opportunity cost here too, what if you had spent that money, those resources, your valuable employees' time on something relevant to the other 99% of your audience instead?

Assuming $60 per sale is really generous too. You move a lot of units by % during sales, especially on PC. And how many Linux gamers are totally unwilling to boot Windows for a game they really anticipate anyways?

This isn't just some open source game though, it's a major AAA title which had 400 work for 3½ years. Also if porting to Linux would be that easy, they would have done it.

It became much easier (for their use case) only quite recently, so you can't compare it to what they had before. I.e. doing it today would be way cheaper than when they were planning to do it. And you definitely can't use TW2 as a comparison (completely different beast using DX9 rather than DX11).

You talk about the progress of Wine -- if they were to put a little thought into the game running under Wine (eg. including Wine users in the beta testing and considering bugs they report to be valid bugs), think that'd be enough for the Linux gaming enthusiasts?

You mean if CDPR would do it? I think that can redeem their somewhat tarnished image for Linux gamers, if they'll make an officialy supported release using Wine.

That is actually not what I meant, if I understand you correctly.

I instead meant unofficially (but genuinely) supporting Linux users running the released Windows version under Wine themselves, for example by accepting bug reports from people running it that way.

There are tools. There are libraries. Nonetheless, you can't just flip a switch and make a game build on Linux, never mind run, never mind run well, never mind run on every distro and every common set of software and drivers, never mind run after every update of the supported distros and drivers

The most heavy lifting goes into the renderer (commonly replacing D3D with OpenGL/Vulkan, or translating the former into the later). Ask people who work in the actual porting. Tweaking builds, distros and etc. is just extra stuff which is incomparable to the hardest rendering part. Check the interview with Ryan Gordon about it. If the heavy lifting is done for you, amount of resources you need to spend on such porting is way way smaller.

Looks and sounds amazing. I am also a big CDPR fan. Unfortunately for me, FPS games make me so nauseous that I can't play them, so I will probably have to skip this one.

Not even at 120 fps?

Not even at 100-degree field of view?

Settings don't matter.

It is simply a case of mismatch in the visual system, and the inner ear motion detectors.

It's the same way most people get sick if there is a disconnect between visual/body motion in VR.

My brain motion processing seems to believe that first person type motion on a screen is real motion, and pretty much any game like this I have tried to play since the original doom, has made me motion sick.

I love RPGs, but when I tried to play Oblivion, I lasted maybe 20 minutes, in the first area you are trying to escape, until I felt like I was gonna puke if I continued. I had to lie down for an hour until I felt better (uninstalled Oblivion right after).

Two things help. Playing with a Joystick and sitting VERY far from the screen, since it breaks immersion, but it is pretty hard to play that way.

I actually think this would be fine in VR with proper 1:1 mapping of in game and body motion, but would need something like an Omni VR treadmill to make that work.

For reference this is correct. I have zero problem playing fast moving FPS images all day long and watching a twitchy FPS for more than a half hour makes me queezy and squint a lot. I'm the same way in the RL cockpit. Give me a front view and controls and I can fly upside down much longer. Go figure.

I instead meant unofficially (but genuinely) supporting Linux users running the released Windows version under Wine themselves, for example by accepting bug reports from people running it that way.

I think CDPR stopped supporting TW3 altogether, no matter for what platform. They ignore all bug reports these days. But if they can for example contribute to Wine / dxvk to make TW3 perfectly runnable that way - I'll surely appreciate such effort.

There are tools. There are libraries. Nonetheless, you can't just flip a switch and make a game build on Linux, never mind run, never mind run well, never mind run on every distro and every common set of software and drivers, never mind run after every update of the supported distros and drivers

The most heavy lifting goes into the renderer (commonly replacing D3D with OpenGL/Vulkan, or translating the former into the later). Ask people who work in the actual porting. Tweaking builds, distros and etc. is just extra stuff which is incomparable to the hardest rendering part. Check the interview with Ryan Gordon about it. If the heavy lifting is done for you, amount of resources you need to spend on such porting is way way smaller.